If you're stupid enough to have an email account tied to anything important and not log into it for over a year, then you deserve to get screwed. I've never understood peoples need to constantly change their email address, I've had the same @yahoo email since the mid 90's.

My old Rocketmail account that was taken over by Yahoo, no spam. My original yahoo e-mail that I used to use with Geocities about 500 years ago? Spam city. Half in Spanish thanks to some woman named Zita.

Haters will hate, and spam is NOT an issue for me, I barely get any at all.

Bullshiat...I've had and used the same yahoo email addy since 1998 and get at least 98% spam, so don't claim you 'never have an issue'. That said, their filters ARE very effective, and next to no spam actually gets into my Inbox.

ReapTheChaos:If you're stupid enough to have an email account tied to anything important and not log into it for over a year, then you deserve to get screwed. I've never understood peoples need to constantly change their email address, I've had the same @yahoo email since the mid 90's.

Not to be a Yahoo-Nazi, but no you haven't. Yahoo didn't start offering email until late 1997, and didn't offer any spam filtering until mid-1998, so unless you have proof of a "mid 90's" Yahoo addy, I'm calling bullshiat.

/same Yahoo email addy since mid-1998/uses Rocketmail for my current Fark handle/gets NO spam on Rocketmail, Outlook or Gmail

I more or less migrated all of my (and my wife's) stuff off yahoo a couple years ago when those spam emails started going out to our yahoo address lists.

It was actually pretty painless. Have fun!

gmail made it much easier to forward / mirror emails to my personal server.

also took the opportunity to set up multiple gmail accounts, which are fairly easy to manage on android, etc... have separate fairly anonymous ones for websites & products (talking to bots) , mailing lists, and finally one blissfully quiet one for friends and family that's the only one I get inbox notifications for.

kinda sad because yahoo worked well back in its heyday. But good to clean house every once in a while.

As someone pointed out in a previous thread, this could be a problem for anyone who registers a domain name for over 1 year using a Yahoo address. If the registrar's procedure for retrieving or resetting lost passwords is insecure enough as to only require the email address, which is available through public DNS records, the domain could potentially get hijacked.

Why don't they just create a new email domain for their customers?Microsoft has Hotmail.com, live.com, msn.com, outlook.com, and I think a couple others. When one domain starts needing al­b­e­rt37382­748o­ohayc­o­m, create a ymail.com domain or whatever.

I think they should make it 3 years, that at least gives a bit more leeway. I would hope Google and other email services that rely on backup addresses for password resets send a message to remind their users to log into yahoo accounts before they expire.

Yahoo is just evicting squatters who haven't paid rent in over a year. "Rent" is looking at ads and whatever other user activity Yahoo monetizes. If you're evicted from an apartment, it's on you to change your address at your bank. If you don't and a new tenant gets your bank statement, it's your fault. If you leave anything behind after the locks are changed, it's no longer yours. Usually, the landlord will throw it away before a new tenant moves in.

OTOH, if you unknowingly move into an apartment previously occupied by a wanted criminal and the cops kick down your door because he didn't change his address at the parole office, it's a Fark headline.

I'm sure that guy will have problems, but I'm pretty isolated in my fake online identities. If there is an l­shermooha­y­co­m, it wasn't me. My Yahoo accounts were named after WWII planes and flowers that looked my wife's vagina.

It's even better. Flicker? That's the best example you could come up with, Mr. Article Writer?

How about Wellsfargo.com? Ebay? Paypal? Amazon? You know, websites with money and credit cards attached to them?

I have a tiny credit union for banking, although they're part of a larger network. My login is my account #, and to get in I need a captcha, personal question (1 of 5, choose your own question / hint), and pin (that doesn't match my debit pin).

To reset any of that I have to call the bank, they call me back on the phone # they have, and I have to verify last 4 of my ssn, birth date, address, and probably something else like what I had for breakfast.

It's even better. Flicker? That's the best example you could come up with, Mr. Article Writer?

How about Wellsfargo.com? Ebay? Paypal? Amazon? You know, websites with money and credit cards attached to them?

In all fairness, Bank accounts and credit cards tied to e-mail addresses correspond with customers through those addresses on a monthly basis at minimum (for statements), so if you haven't logged on to the email account in the year you're so terminally id-insecure that the entire extended family of the royal family of Nigeria already has all your ID info anyhow.

Amazon is a good point, though, I haven't needed to read an Amazon mail... ever, really.

Stone Meadow:Bullshiat...I've had and used the same yahoo email addy since 1998 and get at least 98% spam, so don't claim you 'never have an issue'. That said, their filters ARE very effective, and next to no spam actually gets into my Inbox.

Don't know what you need to prove, but I've had Yahoo since the beginning, and I haven't had a single spam in my inbox in ... I can't even remember when... I emptied my Spam folder earlier today ...habit..(was maybe 5-6 for the last few days)... still nothing

I've never had issues when it comes to account being messed up, nor getting "hacked"', I think that I've seen server issues (being down for a few hours) with Yahoo maybe once for my account. It works fine with my phone's email client, so I have no reason to be a whiny biatch like you.

So sorry if you've used yours for your gay porn and warez crap, but unless you get your email on some serious lists, you aren't gonna get much spam.

Heck, maybe you just have no friends, and 9 Spams and one email from your mom about coupons she found is all you get on a regular day.

maliklockett:So, in other words, if you are irresponsible, it might bite you in the butt.

You have an account tied to a Yahoo email address, log in to keep it active. If not, then it obviously is not that important

This. I have 3 yahoo accounts. Every so often, I log in to my 2 backup addresses and clean out the spam folders and anything that has popped up in the inboxes. It takes under a minute to do. Not a big deal. And you would think Yahoo would have the brains to empty the accounts they free up, before making them available to new people. Its not like they are auctioning storage lockers.

Stone Meadow:imfallen_angel: 15 years with Yahoo, never a single issue...

Haters will hate, and spam is NOT an issue for me, I barely get any at all.

Bullshiat...I've had and used the same yahoo email addy since 1998 and get at least 98% spam, so don't claim you 'never have an issue'. That said, their filters ARE very effective, and next to no spam actually gets into my Inbox.

ReapTheChaos: If you're stupid enough to have an email account tied to anything important and not log into it for over a year, then you deserve to get screwed. I've never understood peoples need to constantly change their email address, I've had the same @yahoo email since the mid 90's.

Not to be a Yahoo-Nazi, but no you haven't. Yahoo didn't start offering email until late 1997, and didn't offer any spam filtering until mid-1998, so unless you have proof of a "mid 90's" Yahoo addy, I'm calling bullshiat.

/same Yahoo email addy since mid-1998/uses Rocketmail for my current Fark handle/gets NO spam on Rocketmail, Outlook or Gmail

I don't know how to break this to you, but 1997 is considered mid 90s.

iron_city_ap:And you would think Yahoo would have the brains to empty the accounts they free up, before making them available to new people. Its not like they are auctioning storage lockers.

Not a bad idea, actually. Contract has ended, property's abandoned. So when I sign up for an ID that was previously used, Yahoo can offer me the option to buy the previous user's stuff for $X. If I decline, it's deleted. Curiosity will get a lot of bites if X is modest, e. g., under $10.

iron_city_ap:<b><a href="http://www.fark.com/comments/7805490/84907659#c84907659" target="_blank">maliklockett</a>:</b> <i>So, in other words, if you are irresponsible, it might bite you in the butt.

You have an account tied to a Yahoo email address, log in to keep it active. If not, then it obviously is not that important</i>

This. I have 3 yahoo accounts. Every so often, I log in to my 2 backup addresses and clean out the spam folders and anything that has popped up in the inboxes. It takes under a minute to do. Not a big deal. And you would think Yahoo would have the brains to empty the accounts they free up, before making them available to new people. Its not like they are auctioning storage lockers.

They already empty out the inboxes after the account goes dead. That is not the issue. The issue is 3rd party sites that email you every so often. After a account gets reactivated, it will still receive mail from those sites if they are some sort of mailing list. If they never updated the 3rd party accounts that hold personal information with a new email address or removed themselves off of mailing lists they're farked.

imfallen_angel:Don't know what you need to prove, but I've had Yahoo since the beginning, and I haven't had a single spam in my inbox in ... I can't even remember when... I emptied my Spam folder earlier today ...habit..(was maybe 5-6 for the last few days)... still nothing

Lucky you. I've got a 4 character yahoo ID no numbers if that gives you an idea how old it is. I use it rarely, and only for online stuff. Never personal email. Last time I logged in was March 28, I log in today and I have 999+ spam in the junk box and 120 spam that made it into the main inbox.

Here's how it will work. A bot crawls the web looking at message board postings, blog entries, and so on, from over a year ago, gathering up vast numbers of old yahoo email addresses. Then it attempts to register all those email addresses on yahoo as new addresses. The success rate will be, what, 10%? Who knows. So now some botnet has taken control of 100,000+ old yahoo email addresses. It then contacts every other website under the sun for each of those email addresses, using each name, under the assumption that someone who made a Bi­glarry5oo­hay­com account probably made a Biglarry5 account on gmail or tumblr or endless numbers of other places.

So it goes to youtube or gmail or wherever, and goes to the "I lost my password" feature, under the assumption that there's a reasonable chance that Biglarry5's youtube account used bi­glarr­y­5o­oha­ycom as his email account. Now biglarry5's youtube password is sent to the new biglarry5 yahoo account, which the bot now controls. The ultimate goal, of course, is to get bank passwords, paypal passwords, and anything else worth real money.

The botnet will end up stealing hundreds of thousands of accounts on various places around the internet, and in the process getting many thousands of bank account passwords.

Of course, there won't just be one person or group doing this, there will be many. I'd guess that every single yahoo email address anyone has any record of ever will have a "new account" request made for it, which means that 99+% of the recycled yahoo accounts will go to hackers.

I more or less migrated all of my (and my wife's) stuff off yahoo a couple years ago when those spam emails started going out to our yahoo address lists.

It was actually pretty painless. Have fun!

gmail made it much easier to forward / mirror emails to my personal server.

also took the opportunity to set up multiple gmail accounts, which are fairly easy to manage on android, etc... have separate fairly anonymous ones for websites & products (talking to bots) , mailing lists, and finally one blissfully quiet one for friends and family that's the only one I get inbox notifications for.

kinda sad because yahoo worked well back in its heyday. But good to clean house every once in a while.

I had a yahoo email for over 10 years, got quite a bit of spam the first year or so, but with some tweaking of the spam filters that was pretty much pared down from daily to a maybe once a week. Always amused me that they thought I was male & my son was female. I got all sorts of spam for ED, penile enlargement & the like, my son was getting all the breast enlargement spam.

Then somewhere along the way, around 2010ish, yahoo made some changes and suddenly our inboxes are being flooded with lots of spam while the legit email was landing in the junk folder. Tried tweaking the spam filters, didn't work. Emailed yahoo quite a few times, never heard back from them. The last night I had yahoo I had cleaned out over 60 spam emails from the inbox. The next morning there were over 150 emails in my inbox, all spam. Closed my account permanently that day and never looked back. Since it's closed it probably won't be available for someone else to take over, but if it is I hope they enjoy all the spam.

BizarreMan:imfallen_angel: Don't know what you need to prove, but I've had Yahoo since the beginning, and I haven't had a single spam in my inbox in ... I can't even remember when... I emptied my Spam folder earlier today ...habit..(was maybe 5-6 for the last few days)... still nothing

Lucky you. I've got a 4 character yahoo ID no numbers if that gives you an idea how old it is. I use it rarely, and only for online stuff. Never personal email. Last time I logged in was March 28, I log in today and I have 999+ spam in the junk box and 120 spam that made it into the main inbox.

Not sure where you find that 4 character yahoo ID... I've been with Yahoo since 1998. (Finally found where is shows this info)

But anyways, I also have another "dummy" account that I created not far after... which I rarely check...

I haven't logged in that one in a while... results:

No spam in inbox, 36 in Spam box.

It really matters if your email gets on some Spamming lists I guess, and I gather taht I managed to avoid them.

Lsherm:No Such Agency: SDRR:Lsherm: Oh Jesus, I use my yahoo account to register for pr0n sites. Someone is going to be very unhappy if I let it lapse.

You register to get pron? And, how do you know they wouldn't be delighted?

I'm guessing if you register for pr0n, you get a LOT of spam and links to malware. And I doubt Yahoo mail is any good at filtering it.

HAH! Says the person who has never had to register for a private yahoo/flickr group!

Snarcoleptic_Hoosier: I'm going to try and claim lsherm[[nospam-﹫-backwards] image 7x13]oohay[* image 7x13]com just to gamble on the potential.

I'm sure that guy will have problems, but I'm pretty isolated in my fake online identities. If there is an lsherm[[nospam-﹫-backwards] image 7x13]oohay[* image 7x13]com, it wasn't me. My Yahoo accounts were named after WWII planes and flowers that looked my wife's vagina.

I'm trying to think of when I last my yahoo accounts last... maybe four years ago for a fantasy football league? I used a yahoo account for my alternate myspace account years back... and then the really long names I used in middle and high school... still, a lot less people are using yahoo now for a regular email address.